CN115430063A - A head-mounted phototherapy device for improving cognition - Google Patents

Abstract

The invention belongs to the technical field of medical devices, in particular to a head-mounted phototherapy device for improving cognition. The device of the present invention includes a lighting module, a control module and a power supply module; the lighting module is composed of a circular circuit substrate, an LED array light source, a diffusion sheet and a heat dissipation device, and is used for illuminating the right frontal position at close range. The control module includes dimming chips, buttons and supporting circuits, which are used to receive user instructions and set the pulse light wavelength, frequency, light intensity, power and light action time. The power supply module is used to supply power to the control module and the light source module. The device can transmit pulsed light or steady-state light with penetrating power, frequency and duty ratio to the cerebral cortex at the forehead. This device can be used for health care and enhancement of cognitive function of healthy people, and auxiliary treatment for patients with impaired brain cognition. The invention innovatively utilizes the photobiomodulation effect between photons and cerebral cortex neurons to achieve the effect of improving cognition.

Description

A head-mounted phototherapy device for improving cognition

technical field

The invention belongs to the technical field of medical devices, and in particular relates to a phototherapy device.

Background technique

Transcranial red light and infrared light irradiation is a method that has emerged in the past decade and has been proven to significantly improve the cognitive ability of young people, the elderly and patients with cognitive diseases. Cognition specifically includes vigilance, attention, memory, execution, etc. There are many ways to improve cognition, such as drug therapy, physical exercise, transcranial magnetic pulse and so on. The effects of transcranial light on cognitive enhancement have been extensively studied for the past decade. Data from cell experiments, animal experiments, and human experiments all show that transcranial photoirradiation has a significant positive effect on the improvement of cognition. Transcranial photoirradiation often uses the penetrating ability of red or infrared light to allow the light to penetrate the scalp and skull to reach the effective area of the cerebral cortex, and use the mutual photobiomodulation effect of photons and brain tissue to enhance the ATP activity of neurons and improve the mitochondrial membrane. Potential, promote brain oxygenation rate, modulate EEG frequency, so as to achieve the effect of improving cognition.

LED has the characteristics of high luminous efficiency, fast response speed, narrow spectrum, and combinable spectrum. It can obtain LED pulse light source with certain frequency and duty cycle by means of PWM dimming or current dimming. A technical problem in the field of transcranial light is that the scalp and skull have a significant reduction effect on light, and often only about 1%-5% of light energy can reach the cerebral cortex, so it is difficult to transmit an effective dose of light energy to the cerebral cortex. The use of pulsed light can equivalently increase the penetration depth and solve this problem. At the same time, the frequency of pulsed light can resonate with the inherent EEG rhythm of the human brain, play a role in modulating the EEG rhythm, and further improve cognitive ability.

Contents of the invention

The purpose of the present invention is to provide a head-mounted phototherapy device that can effectively increase the penetration depth of light to improve cognition.

The head-mounted phototherapy device for improving cognition provided by the present invention includes a power supply module, an illumination module and a control module; wherein:

The power module provides a stable power supply for the whole device, and the output voltage range is 10~20V;

The illumination module is used to illuminate target cells; it is in the shape of a thin cylinder and is composed of a flexible circuit substrate, a diffusion plate, a light source and a heat sink; the light source is a single-color LED array of the same model or a variety of different peak wavelengths. A single-color LED array, with a peak wavelength in the range of 600-1000nm; the LED array is distributed concentrically on the flexible circuit substrate of the lighting module; the diffusion plate is a uniform light plate or a light mask of the same size, It is arranged on the main surface of the flexible circuit substrate and the side where the light source emits light, and is used to diffuse the outgoing light; the heat dissipation device is an aluminum heat sink or a semiconductor cooling sheet, which is closely attached to the back of the flexible circuit substrate. The function is to dissipate heat when the light source is activated;

The control module includes a dimming chip, a button and its supporting circuit, which are used to receive user instructions and set the pulse light wavelength, frequency, light intensity, power and light action time.

This device is a head-mounted wearable device, which is fixed on the head by an elastic band. When in use, the light module should be close to the forehead, and the user controls the light through the button on the control module.

further:

The control module performs constant current driving and PWM dimming on the LED array light source.

The control module performs PWM dimming on the light source, wherein the amplitude range is 10-20V, the frequency setting range is 10Hz-20kHz, and the duty cycle setting range is 10-1000%. The preferred duty cycle is 50-200%.

The target cells are specifically neuronal cells.

The cognitive ability specifically includes vigilance, attention, memory, executive ability and the like.

The beneficial effects of the present invention are:

(1) The present invention uses LEDs with specific effective wavelengths to match the absorption peaks of chromophores contained in brain tissue, which can greatly improve the effectiveness of phototherapy;

(2) The present invention uses a pulse waveform, which can achieve a higher peak intensity under the same power, and a higher penetration depth into the tissue, which solves the problem that most transcranial optical devices are difficult to reach the effective depth;

(3) The device acts on the neuron cells of the prefrontal cortex, which can improve the mitochondrial function of the cells, activate ATP production, promote the oxygenation rate of the brain, and achieve the beneficial effect of improving cognition.

Description of drawings

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a head-mounted phototherapy device module of the present invention.

Fig. 2 is a structural diagram of the head-mounted phototherapy device of the present invention.

Fig. 3 is a comparison between the pulsed light and the low-power steady-state light of the embodiment of the present invention.

Numbers in the figure: 1 is a flexible circuit substrate, 2 is a diffusion plate, 3 is an LED array light source, 4 is an elastic belt, and 5 is a heat dissipation device.

detailed description

The following will clearly and completely describe the technical solutions in the embodiments of the present invention in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in the embodiments of the present invention. Obviously, the described examples are only some, not all, embodiments of the present invention. Based on the embodiments of the present invention, all other embodiments obtained by persons of ordinary skill in the art without making creative efforts belong to the protection scope of the present invention.

At present, there are few phototherapy instruments aimed at improving cognitive ability in the market, and foreign products use low-intensity weak lasers as light sources. The waveform of the laser is difficult to adjust, and most of them are constant current light; while the LED can adjust the pulse waveform more easily, increase the peak power, and achieve a deeper penetration depth. At the same time, LED has the advantages of short response time, small size, high luminous efficiency, high brightness, low heat, low power consumption, and long life. Therefore, in recent years, more and more wearable phototherapy devices use LEDs as light sources. The purpose of the present invention is to be able to penetrate the skin and skull at the forehead to reach the cerebral cortex at the frontal cortex with the effective dose of red light used for treatment. Therefore, it is necessary to use pulse dimming to achieve a deeper penetration depth under constant power . At the same time, considering the thermal effect, the heat emitted by the device should not be too high, so as not to damage the cells of the forehead epidermis.

An embodiment of the present invention provides a head-mounted phototherapy device for improving cognition, including a power module, a lighting module and a control module (Fig. 1).

Fig. 2 is a structural diagram of the lighting module device of the present invention. The lighting module is composed of a flexible circuit substrate 1, a diffuser plate 2 and an LED array light source 3, and the flexible circuit substrate 1 is circular with a diameter of 4 cm. The diffusion plate 2 is a uniform light plate or a light mask of the same size. It is arranged on the side facing the main surface of the circuit substrate 1 , and is a plate with interference to the outgoing light for diffusing the light. The material of the diffusion plate 2 is common glass and polycarbonate (PC), and other materials can also be selected. The LED array light source 2 is a monochromatic LED light source or multiple monochromatic LED light sources with different peak wavelengths. The peak wavelength range is 600nm~1000nm, and the half-wave full width of the spectrum is less than 40nm. The LED array light source 2 receives the working signal from the control module through the flexible circuit substrate 1 and emits pulse light. Pulsed light is monochromatic light with a certain working time, peak wavelength, duty cycle and frequency. The phototherapy device is made wearable, and an elastic band 4 is provided to fix the phototherapy device on the head, so as to improve portability and usability. The heat dissipation device 5 is used to dissipate heat when the light source is activated to maintain a comfortable temperature.

The pulsed light emitted by the device of the present invention can reach a deeper penetration depth, and its principle is shown in FIG. 3 . For the target phototherapy area at the cerebral cortex, the corresponding target cells are neuron cells. Assuming that the peak wavelength of the effective phototherapy band is 630nm, assuming that the power P1 of the low-power LED phototherapy device is 10mW, the average power P2 of the pulsed light phototherapy device of the present invention is also 10mW. The difference is that the pulsed light LED phototherapy device of the present invention has the flexibility of instantaneous power, the peak voltage can be set to 3V, the current is constant to 111mA, and the duty cycle is 30%. At this time, the average power is still 10mW, but the instantaneous power P2' reaches 33.3mW, and the instantaneous energy received by neuron cells is 3.3 times that of low-power LED phototherapy equipment, which has increased by 133%. Therefore, the pulse phototherapy device of the present invention has higher activation ability to target cells than the low-power LED phototherapy device, and is expected to have better therapeutic effect, which has certain advantages.

To sum up, the transcranial pulsed light phototherapy device of the present invention can obtain an LED pulsed light source with a certain frequency and duty cycle through the PWM dimming method, and its instantaneous energy can be set to a higher state. The pulsed LED red light of a specific band can penetrate the scalp and skull on the forehead, reach the frontal lobe of the brain, and activate neuron activity through the photochemical effect, increase the oxygenation rate of the brain, and then improve cognition such as vigilance, memory, attention etc. In a word, the pulsed light phototherapy device of the present invention has two advantages of high instantaneous power and internal mechanism analysis, and has broad application prospects.

Claims (2)

1. A head-mounted phototherapy device for improving cognition is characterized by comprising a power supply module, an illumination module and a control module; wherein:

the power supply module provides a stable power supply for the whole device, and the output voltage range is 10 to 20V;

the illumination module is used for illuminating the target cells; the lamp is in the shape of a thin cylinder, consists of a flexible circuit substrate, a diffusion plate, a heat dissipation device and a light source, and is used for closely irradiating the position of the right forehead; the light source is a single-color LED array of the same type or a plurality of single-color LED arrays with different peak wavelengths, and the peak wavelength is within the range of 600-1000nm; the LED arrays are distributed on the flexible circuit substrate of the illumination module in a concentric circle mode; the diffusion plate is a light homogenizing plate or a light covering sheet with the same size, is arranged on the main surface of the flexible circuit substrate and the side, towards which the light emitted by the light source faces, and is used for diffusing the emergent light; the heat dissipation device is an aluminum profile heat dissipation sheet or a semiconductor refrigeration sheet, is tightly attached to the back of the flexible circuit substrate and is used for dissipating heat when the light source is started;

the control module comprises a dimming chip, a button and a matched circuit thereof and is used for receiving a user instruction and setting the pulse light wavelength, the frequency, the light intensity, the power and the illumination action time.

2. A head-mounted phototherapy device as defined in claim 1 wherein said control module constant current drives and PWM dims the LED array light sources;

the light source performs PWM dimming, wherein the amplitude range is 10-20V, the frequency range is 10 Hz-20kHz, and the duty ratio range is 10-1000%.

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